Re: One For The Road

: : : : : : Recently I have been troubled with a definition and
I don't know if I may ask it here. I have a difficulty to define
past, present, and future. As you see, 'Today' is a present time,
but within today there is some past hour and some future hour. It
follows that past and future are part of the present time. It doesn't
make sense, so it troubles me. May you give a point?

: : : : : Well..."the present" is the block of time that you are
now experiencing. For the rest, there are degrees. The past, the
recent past, the distant past, the near future, the distant future.
You might see what Merriam-Webster has to say about it.

: : : : : A Stephen King character, a Wolf/man creature from another
dimension calls the present "right here and now." Or something like
that.

: : : : : I have a nine-year-old friend who, his mother says, doesn't
like for her to use words like "yesterday" or "tomorrow." He wants
her, for example, to say "Monday" instead of yesterday. She worries
about him. But he's interested in science and I'm thinking he wants
days of the week because that's more precise.

: : : Some 2500 years ago next Tuesday, Heraclitus said "You can't
step into the same river twice." His follower, whose name escapes
me at the moment, went further with "You can't step into the same
river once." The "present" is a slippery little concept, since a
snapshot is a kind of lie that we all agree to. Nothing stands still.

: : Cue the music.

: : "Dust in the wind
: : All we are is dust in the wind
: : Dust in the wind
: : All we are is dust in the wind

: : I close my eyes
: : Only for a moment, then the moment's gone
: : All my dreams
: : Pass before my eyes, a curiosity
: : Dust in the wind
: : All we are is dust in the wind..."

: : Now I'm REALLY depressed.

: What is the present? It's actually an extremely hard concept
that's troubled philosophers, physicists and small shaven-headed
men in saffron robes for eons. Using a device like Occam's razor
to slice lengths of time into smaller and smaller fragments, one
can effectively "prove" that no given "present" can last any time
at all, since it becomes the past near-on instantaneously (even
if only the very VERY recent past). So, some might say that the
present's an ever-travelling non-instant upon the exact point of
which our consciousnesses surf... then again others might say "Sod
that for a game of soldiers, let's go and have a beer instead."

: Personally when faced with impossible questions, I always find
it easiest to affect a knowing look, tap my finger to the side of
my nose and whisper "Quantum".